About eight or ten years ago, when Trump was only a fake television tycoon and before he became a fake emperor, I bought one of his branded neckties on sale. At 50% off it was reasonably priced. It was red, of course. It was like any other necktie I owned, except that in true Donald…
The SS Royal William was built in Quebec City for John Molson and a syndicate of other shareholders, fitted with a steam engine in Montreal in 1831, and soon entered into packet service between Quebec and Halifax. Until 1839, the Royal William was the largest passenger ship in the world. In 1833 she crossed the…
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” Quite true, but the important thing is to ask why anyone would put lipstick on a pig in the first place. You see, the lipstick guy has a goal: he wants to sell you his pig. But he knows you’re not in the…
Early in my legal career I represented a young rascal named Jean-Guy (not his actual name, but close enough). He was eighteen or nineteen, tall and skinny, and what you might call a “space cadet”. You’ll soon see what I mean. Jean-Guy and some friends had planned the ultimate heist. They were going to get…
It was a completely normal afternoon at the office– document drafting, research, instructions to staff and juniors, phone calls– all the routine stuff of a law office. Then normalcy had a trainwreck in the form of an unexpected call from my doctor’s office. “Mr. Bowley?” “Yes?” “Doctor Fletcher needs to see you tomorrow morning. We’re…
Bet you thought this was going to be about 2020. But it’s not, at least not directly. It’s about 1816. 1816 sucked. Really sucked. After years of war in Europe and North America, the world needed a break. It didn’t catch one, but instead caught nearly two years of misery, 1816 being the worst. As…
It was a gorgeous late-September afternoon, still summer but hinting of the first flirt of autumn. For whatever reason, the doors of the cathedral hadn’t yet opened, but that simply meant we continued to enjoy one another’s company on the sun-dappled grass under the majestic maples, several hundred Ottawa lawyers fully gowned as if for…
Over the last half century or so, Ontario has built dozens of big new regional courthouses, many of them quite spectacular, but none with the quiet majesty of the stately limestone county courthouses they replaced. But that’s the subject of another story. As each new county or region got its new courthouse, many of the…
The old pews had been hand-hewn, nearly a century earlier, from single planks sawn from the great white pine forests of the Ottawa Valley. Carefully mortised into elegantly carved end pieces, those planks had held generations of solemn Baptists Sunday after Sunday. The back pew furthest from the door was favoured by the more youthful…
September 3, 1967 was Högertrafikomläggningen in Sweden– the day they switched from driving on the left side of the road (as in the UK) to the right hand side of the road (as in Canada and all of Sweden’s neighbours). The switch occurred in the very early morning hours, as state and municipal employees raced…